Workshops

An update from our sixth weekly writing workshop A summary of this week’s project, plus some of the output published below The Stone Soup Weekly Writing Workshop, held on Fridays at 1:00 p.m. PST, is open to all Stone Soup contributors and subscribers during the COVID-19-related school closures and shelter-in-place arrangements. We meet via Zoom to respond to a new writing challenge, write together in our virtual room, and then share what we have written with one another. At our session on Friday May 8, the group was focused on creating a strong Sense of Place. The group discussed what sense of place means to them: a description of a specific environment that is topical to you; a description of the surroundings where and circumstances in which the story is taking place. A good sense of place would mean that the readers can visualise where the story is taking place. If it’s strong, you feel like you are there in the environment that is being described. William presented a number of short passages that give strong examples of sense of place: Andrew Lang, Charles Dickens, Jean Giono, Robert Musill, J. R. R. Tolkein; and some landscape photographs and paintings that conveyed strong atmosphere and mood (such as Ferdinand Hodler’s View of the Swiss Alps) which participants responded to and discussed. At the end of 30-35 minutes of writing 8 participants read their work and had it commented on. This was another workshop just humming with ideas and creativity. The Writing Challenge: Focus on Sense of Place. This exercise requires a pure focus on the setting. You may not get into a story or a whole poem. We are looking for writing that conveys a strong declaration of where we are. The Participants:  Ever, Emily, Analise, Liam, Peri, Suman, Djin, Ma’ayan, Anya, Lucy, Georgia, Tristan, Gracie, Lauren, Sophia, Allegra, Arianna, Aviya, Michaela, Maddie, Silas, Justin, Vishnu, Lewis, Kendyll, Chloe, Gina, Abhi, Laila, Ethan, Shai. Below you can read just a few examples of the great work that came out of this workshop. Allegra Maio, 10Brooklyn, NY I walk Allegra the Adaptable, 10 I walk into the living room to find 4 walls filled with luxurious stuff. The walls a pretty purple with matching carpets to coat the floor. The emptiness I feel, soon becomes a feeling of pleasure. Tables and chairs, sanded down to the last bit. A dead bear on the floor; a deer’s antlers hanging on the wall; and a wall full of rabbits’ feet. The presence of being here makes me want to feel free to burst out of my shell. I smell the faint smell of weed and assume it’s my father. I run my fingers along the wall. I feel every bit of the purple. I chip away at some dry paint, only wanting to feel. I notice, I notice the world around me. I notice the green, blue and yellow of the floor, something I have never noticed. Even the walls, seem different. “It’s not what you look at that matters;” my mom used to say, “It’s what you see.” I used to never understand that meaning, and now, I finally do Michaela Frey, 12Herndon, VA Winter Awakening Michaela Frey, 12 A quiet morning during the mid-winter, a window between the old year and the new year, you tiptoe out of the small cabin. It is sometime early, as the old, wooden grandfather clock just hit the starry northern twelve, making a song fit for only those who dare awaken early, a beautiful sonnet just for you. The morning is as beautiful as no other, a minute after the past day, you cherish the seconds. The grassy ground is coated in layers of untouched snow, and you hesitate before stepping into it. The day is born, but the stars are still floating up in the sky, the moon shining brightly, all spread out between gaps that look small, but you know that really, the gaps are farther between every star than you could think of. The snowflakes smile up at you, each a different, unique star of its own. Trees are painted a winter white, all without leaves, but beautiful nonetheless. They smile at you as well. You tiptoe across the acres of white until you reach the frozen lake. The world seems to have stopped, frozen, just like the lake. It is silent, but not a eerie silence, not like the silence in your home during early mornings, as you know all the birds will begin chirping soon, the squirrels will start to scurry across the trees, the children will soon begin to step outside, cheerily tossing snowballs at each other. But right now it is just you and the snow, the lake, the trees. And those are the things that are there, in the light of the earliest minute of the morning. Anya Geist, 13Worcester, MA Untitled 1 Anya Geist, 13 A stiff wind pushed its way through the air, consumed by a hot dryness that seemed to leach color and life out of every living thing. The air was dusty, but empty, left alone to feed on countless shriveled gardens and to fade previously vibrant clapboards in town. Nobody dared to venture outside in this tepid weather, where the heat beat down even stronger than the blazing sun; instead they sheltered in their homes, afraid to open the windows, afraid to let the monster of heat in. A little ways out of the town, over a parched field, and up a stubby, short hill there was a house. It was perched all alone, surrounded by yellow, faded grasses, and covered with the canopy of the almost-yellow, cloudless sky. Its sides had once been a pristine white, the color of a wedding dress amidst emerald green fields, but now it seemed to have no color. It simply blended into the background, into the pure lifelessness of the sky. The windows were open in this house, the glass grimy and cracked, the sashes crooked, propped up by